Paths We Tread
by Morfiwen
Summary: After the great battle in front of the Gates of Mordor.


It is over.

Tonight, is a night for bitter victory. Finally, the shadow is relinquished to the winds to blow away again.

Only to return, with the change on the wind. But it is not now.

Now is the time for contemplation of our victory, bitter, not in the true sense, but victory nonetheless.

Bodies, both foe and ally littered the battlefield, as far as my eyes could see. The smell alone caused me to wish not to breathe. Rarely do I curse my elven heritage, being prideful of being Eldar but now...I curse my long sight.

I turn my eyes from the faces of those I knew, in a sleep that they would never wake. Good men, who fought knowing that they would die, never knowing in the dimming of death whether their sacrifice is justified.

Humans, the second born, the ones with the gift of death. The gift. Never have I envied it until now. Their lives burn bright, brighter than any perfection that the Eldar can devise, so bright, so beautiful...so brief.

A relief.

How could any bear this? How could he bear this? To carry memories of such as these? Forever scarred, doomed to remember. Doomed to live. Doomed to see one flower's, amongst many, first steps to its bloom, and then to see it wilt and become part of the earth again.

Doomed to see the ends of Arda...the selfishness of my kindred reveals its true import in me. It wasn't out of cruelty that they shun the other races...

...now I know.

"Lad?" Gimli touched my hand, his bushy eyebrows furrowed in a concerned frown.

"Gimli," I am a seasoned warrior, hunting foul beasts and fighting off orcs is of no foreign matter to me. Young as I am, for 3 millennia I am accustomed to losing comrades, knowing that we will meet, someday, in the halls of Mandos ere the time we will be returned to life in Aman.

But those were elves.

These are mortals. They are free from the cycle of Arda, all of them. The fellowship. Tears trickled down my cheeks unwittingly, grief that no words can truly describe.

Gimli, at loss to what to do, placed his arm around my shoulders as I kneel there, and cried unashamedly.

"There, there elf. What commits your tears?"

"These people..." I looked at him and he understood.

"Mortals die, you know that. We envy your long life sometimes, but we have too little time to really worry about that. What we can do is to live it as well as we can for our children, and children's children," his expression softened somewhat. "I daresay we had the better deal though, I cannot imagine myself living with memories of hundreds of battles like this, not to mention disastrous skirmishes. There is a limit to what a dwarf can stomach."

"You...accept?"

"What else is there to do? The gift is ours, whether we wished it or no, just like yours. Our immortality is in the faces of our children. Yours live on in memories gone by. What little pleasure we have is what we cherish, since it could be our last."

The wind caressed my face, a stained tendril of hair forayed to my eyes.

"There is a text in my father's library. Unforgettably, it said, we will dwell in Aman till the world ends, and then will the Eldar and the second born be together, and judged for our deeds in life on Arda," Gimli gave a wry smile.

"Then we shall have that to look forward to then, lad."

Take what little comfort you may have, and carry it within your heart. Move on. Live life as it is the last.

Remarkable how much mortals can show you despite the short years of their lives the depths of their wisdom, however brief, but bright as the stars at night. They say the elves glowed, but they themselves do not know their own worth. Our glow may be seen in our hroa, granted, but the spirits of men are hardier than could ever be attained by any elf. The glow of mortals is in their eyes. Their eyes will shed tears, yet softened at a child's joyful greeting, their eyes can be as hard and unyielding as steel, yet gently sway like a willow in a windstorm, bending yet never breaking under pressure.

The time of the elves are ending.

Men alone won this fight, and men shall rule Middle Earth hereafter.


End file.
